The High Court’s ruling Wednesday that judges have no power to issue a common fund order in the initial phases of a class action does not bind them after a settlement has been reached, a Federal Court judge said Friday.
A judge has given the green light to a $1.5 million settlement in a long-running class action against ANZ alleging it slapped customers with illegal fees, with group members expected to get no more than $100 and potentially walking away with “substantially less” than this.
The end of the common fund order is a setback for class actions that will see a revival of the days of closed proceedings, costly bookbuilding, higher commission rates and the shelving of worthy but risky cases, experts say, and all eyes will now turn to state and federal governments to see how they respond to calls for legislative intervention.
Funder IMF Bentham expects to bring in up to $130 million in income for backing the Queensland floods class action, after a judge ruled last week that the operator of two dams as well as the state government were responsible for the severity of the flooding that hit Southeast Queensland in 2011.
Accounting giant Ernst & Young, which has been dragged into two class actions by Slater & Gordon shareholders, has shot back at claims it was negligent in its 2015 audit report of the law firm’s UK division, which included a review of the firm’s disastrous acquisition of Quindell’s professional services arm that found no impairment on the goodwill value of the deal.
The NSW Supreme Court has ruled against the operators of two Queensland dams as well as the state government, finding they were vicariously liable for the negligence of flood engineers in the 2011 Southeast Queensland floods that destroyed over 2,000 homes.
Eight years after floods in Southeast Queensland destroyed more than 2,000 homes, a judge will deliver his ruling in two class actions seeking a record $1 billion in damages, and the decision could well come down to which of two conflicting flood modeling reports the judge sides with.
Infant food maker Bellamy’s has agreed to pay $49.7 million to settle two shareholder class actions alleging the company misled investors in 2016 about its China growth strategy and declining infant formula market share in Australia.
An investigation into donations made to activist group GetUp! by the Australian Workers’ Union more than a decade ago has been closed down by a judge, who has also ordered the return of documents seized in high-profile raids of the union’s offices.
Maurice Blackburn disregarded emails by the artist behind the iconic Fearless Girl statue questioning whether she would be breaching her contract with US asset management firm State Street in selling the law firm a replica, a court has heard.